It Took A Village To Prepare Hair For Day 1

​“Everyday I look in the mirror and tell myself, ​‘You can do this,” 14-year-old Emani Arnold said from a folding chair where she patiently waited two hours for a back-to-school hairdo of bright red braids.

Those burgundy plaits will frame Arnold’s face Monday morning when she performs the mirror routine in preparation for her first day of 11th grade.

Thanks to a hair styling marathon held Sunday to get students ready for their return to in-person classes, Emani and 30 other kids will start the academic year holding their heads high.

They’ll do so in order to show off their sleek haircuts, courtesy of both licensed barbers and well-practiced volunteers.

The students participating in Sunday’s event ranged from 5 to 15 years old. The free salon operated out of The Village, a Hamden youth center founded by Melissa Atterberry-Jones. Atterberry-Jones has organized no-charge first-day-of-school styling services every August— with the exception of 2020— for the past nine years.

On Friday, The Village distributed school supplies, sneakers, and backpacks. On Sunday, the nonprofit ensured that those same students received beads, hair bows, extensions, and trims.

According to the volunteers who gave their time this weekend, the confidence created through a cool cut can be as critical to a child’s success as pencils and paper.

“I believe that when a child looks good, they do good and feel good,” Atterberry-Jones stated as she greased and combed the curls of Naylani Arnold, Emani’s sister.

Before she developed The Village, which launched in 2020 and achieved nonprofit status in 2021, Atterberry-Jones styled kids’ hair (on an annual basis) free of charge out of her church. This was the first year that she did so within her own youth center on Pershing Street in Hamden.

It was also the first year that Ebony Peterson, owner of Salon E’Selim in New Haven, shared her professional skills with The Village community. ​“It’s not about doing hair. It’s about knowing hair,” she said. It’s also, she said, about coming to know clients — and using cosmetology as a way to inspire youth of color to empower themselves and one another.

Naylani Arnold plans to start cosmetology classes during her first semester at Eli Whitney Technical High School. Her older sister Emani has different aspirations.

Emani studies creative writing at New Haven’s Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School. She wants to become a journalist or a certified nursing assistant.

But first, she wants to graduate high school. Though she said she loves school, and particularly enjoys studying African American history and playing sports, she was quick to admit that it hasn’t always been easy.

Before starting at Cooperative High School, Emani said, she transferred schools two times due to incessant bullying.

“I got pushed down the stairs and got my hair pulled,” she remembered. ​“They’d always call me ugly because they didn’t like the way I wore my hair in a bun or a ponytail, and usually showed up to school in sweatpants and T‑shirts.”

“What’s wrong with the way I dress?” she asked. ​“I don’t want to wear a belly shirt or a skirt or a nose ring.”

Emani said she has a ​“confident side and a down side.” In the past, she reflected, her ​“down side” has usually prevailed over patterns of positive thinking.

“That’s not who I want to be anymore — somebody who gives up,” she said, relating emotional resiliency to academic achievement. To get better grades, she concluded, she will first need to learn ways to feel safe and secure within herself.

She recalled how when her grandmother died, she couldn’t go to school or focus on homework. Her family gave her a pin with her grandmother’s face on it; she found that wearing it to class helped her cope.

“It’s like she’s here,” Arnold said.

That helped her realize that taking control of her external image, and thinking critically about how to communicate her identity and values to others, could change how she functioned internally.

“I’m tired of wearing buns. That’s not how I want people to picture me — as someone who wears the same thing everyday and can’t change.”

At one point she told her mom she was thinking of harming herself because of abuse from her classmates. Her mom connected her with a therapist who helped. Now Emani works as a peer counselor for other students who are targets of bullying within her school. ​“People think it’s weird that we like anime, and they call us geeks.”

Even though her new hair might earn her ​“popularity” points when she returns to school, she speculated, years of toughing it out have taught her how to stay true to her roots.

“I’m not a follower. I’ll go my own path,” Emani asserted. ​“I want to stay safe, make my mother proud … and dissect a frog.”

Later that afternoon, Ebony Arnold, Emani and Naylani’s mom, pulled up to The Village to pick up her daughters.

She found Melissa Atterbury-Jones taking photos of them in the parking lot — and discovered a broader support system she previously didn’t know existed.

Atterbury-Jones, who had overheard Emani’s story, told her about a ​“Teen Talk” group she was planning to start in late September, as well as after-school activities and mentorship opportunities available through the center.

Ebony Arnold had heard about the hair event on Facebook. She was relieved not to spend hours ​“doing all those tiny braids” in her kids’ hair after a full day working two jobs, or to spend ​“over $300” to pay a salon to do it.

That kind of assistance would’ve been enough. But The Village’s efforts are not limited to split ends. Their center’s sense of sisterhood and family extends to all who seek it out.

“Free hairstyles for young girls of color are one thing,” Ebony Arnold said. ​“Real consistency is something else. These people are doing something for the community.”